Drill in Louisiana tests emergency systems ahead of storm season

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NEW ORLEANS — State and federal authorities tracked the path of a fictitious “Hurricane Alicia” on Tuesday as part of two-day drill aimed at avoiding the chaos that followed last year’s deadly Hurricane Katrina.

The drill was organized to allow first responders and others, including Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco, to react as though a Category 3 hurricane was hitting the state’s Gulf Coast.

“I want you to know Louisiana is prepared for the next storm. There is no work more important to the state than protecting our citizens during hurricane season,” Blanco told reporters at the state Office of Emergency Preparedness headquarters in Baton Rouge.

In New Orleans, volunteers playing the part of evacuees boarded city buses and headed to the city’s convention center. From there, they would be taken to shelters, first within the state and then elsewhere depending upon occupancy.

“The more we practice the better we’ll be when a storm hits,” Marine Cpl. Jose Resendiz, 30, said as he and about a dozen other make-believe evacuees boarded a bus in New Orleans’ Algiers neighborhood.

New evacuation plan testedThat aspect of the drill is part of Nagin’s new city-assisted evacuation plan unveiled earlier this month. Last year, as Hurricane Katrina approached, thousands of the city’s poor were left behind because they had no transportation, couldn’t afford to leave or didn’t know where to go.

About 1 million people drove out of the New Orleans area, but more than 1,000 were killed in Louisiana when flood walls failed and tens of thousands of residents were trapped in attics and stranded on rooftops.

Jerry Sneed of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security said the city will test new technology that allows it to know who’s leaving on buses and trains and where they’re going.

Officials are especially concerned about the state’s more than 200,000 residents living in travel trailers and countless others in unfinished homes. Part of Tuesday’s drill includes a mock evacuation of the state’s largest trailer site in Baker, La., a Baton Rouge suburb. The site has more than 500 trailers housing about 1,500 people.

“These travel trailers will not hold up in strong winds,” said Mark Smith, spokesman for the state’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Shelters will be last resortOfficials are urging residents to make their own arrangements for a place to stay because shelter capacity, even though increased since last year, will not be enough to hold all residents.

“Public shelters should be used as a last resort,” said Ann Williamson, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Social Services.

In-state shelters are prepared to take in about 55,000 people — 22 percent more than they had room for last year, officials said. Still, that space would fill quickly in a mass evacuation.

Parishes in central and northern Louisiana say they’re better prepared to help because of lessons learned from Katrina. Many already are making sure they have supplies like cots, blankets, food and water.

Scientists predict the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1 and runs through November, could produce 16 named storms, including six major hurricanes.

Evacuations in New Orleans should be easier, in part because far fewer residents are living in the city, and most have cars. Less than half of the 455,000 pre-Katrina residents have returned.

To quell fears of looting, National Guard troops may be stationed with police throughout the city before storms, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew would be in place once an evacuation is ordered, New Orleans police said.

Evacuees also will be allowed to take pets on buses this summer, removing an obstacle for some during Katrina who were unwilling to leave the city without their dogs or cats.